ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the two tales about robbers and abbots on crime and literature. What medieval historians have usually done with medieval crime literature is to look for the correspondences with history, as if historical and literary evidence were mutually reinforcing, each confirming the veracity or verisimilitude of the other. The purpose of conducting the survey of religious tales about crime is that secular literature echoes and reflects many of the same plots and concerns. The motif of the robber's treacherous accomplices also transferred into secular literature. The intertextual approach, in some versions at least, can give historians a handle on literature. The 'familiar territory' in Boccaccio's tale and the Robin Hood ballad is made up of varying combinations of 'extratextual' reality and past literature. The chapter examines narratology and intertextuality help people to perceive not only the shared narrative elements of the three stories, and suggests the connections that the medieval audiences would have made between them.
